Patrick Kurp doesn’t find reading lists helpful. He recommends people cast around for what they want to read, not a list of what they should read.

Edward Dahlberg, on the other hand, enjoyed lists.

“Edward venerated the classics, and anyone who knew him was bound to have one of his book lists, most of whose titles are never read in the universities. . . . He thought it absurd that students be required to rush through their literature courses at the rate of a novel a week, and he always cautioned that you should not proceed with a book if you did not like it.”